Michael Wolf’s forecast pegs the 10-year U.S. Treasury note at 3.9% from the third quarter of 2027 through the end of 2030, a path that helps shape the next five years for the fixed-rate mortgage market. For borrowers and refinancers, that means the rate they face will hinge on how closely mortgage pricing tracks Treasury yields as the spread keeps tightening.
Wolf’s 3.9% Treasury path
3.9% is the number Wolf tied to the long end of the market in a December update from the Deloitte Global Economics Research Center. He said, “We assume the Fed leaves rates unchanged until December 2026. The average federal funds rate reaches its neutral 3.125% in the middle of 2027.” He also wrote that the 10-year Treasury yield will ease gradually through the second quarter of 2027 before settling at that 3.9% level.
December 2026 is the first fixed point in that sequence. If the Federal Reserve holds rates unchanged until then, the 10-year U.S. Treasury note forecast gives mortgage pricing a lower-rate backdrop than the one borrowers saw when rates were moving sharply with the Middle East conflict. The line matters because 30-year fixed mortgage rates usually move in the same direction as Treasury yields, even though lenders add a premium for credit risk, prepayment risk, and mortgage-backed securities supply and demand.
March 5 spread at 1.91 points
1.91 percentage points was the spread on March 5, when the 10-year Treasury yield stood at 4.09% and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate was 6.00%. That gap had already narrowed below two percentage points, and the spread has begun normalizing in late 2025.
2.5 percentage points is the wider range the spread has often occupied in recent years. From 2010 to 2020, it was under two percentage points and often near 1.5, which gives borrowers a clear comparison point: today’s gap is still wider than the old norm, but it is moving back toward it. For anyone choosing between buying now or waiting, the spread is the part of the forecast that can make the same Treasury move translate into a different mortgage bill.
Goldman Sachs and the Congressional Budget Office
4.1% is the Congressional Budget Office projection for the 10-year Treasury yield by the end of 2026, while Goldman Sachs sees the note rising to 4.5% by 2035. The Congressional Budget Office also projects about 4.3% by 2030, which sits above Wolf’s 3.9% level for the same window. That difference leaves room for mortgage rates to move even if Treasury yields stay inside a relatively narrow band.
3.9% is not a mortgage-rate forecast by itself. It is the Treasury anchor that lenders and refinancers will use to judge whether the fixed-rate mortgage market keeps easing, levels off, or snaps back wider if spreads stop tightening. The unresolved question is how closely 30-year fixed mortgage rates will track that yield path once the market finishes normalizing.
